My birthday is next week, but I won't be around for it because I'll be in Italy. (Huzzah!) So, Shawn gave me his birthday present over the weekend at a little pre-birthday celebration, which made the video game monster in me quite pleased as it was a brand new PSP. I've been wanting a PSP for some time, but the lack in working kind of put ownership plans to a halt. I had decided that as soon as I got a new job that a PSP would be my present to myself. Shawn was so sweet to beat me to the punch. Now I'll have two gaming systems to play with on the way to Italy. My mom will totally roll her eyes at me and it will be alllll worth it.

Sony's Quick Clarification

Sooo, are they stopping production of the 60GB model or not? "Ample supplies" for the "foreseeable future" doesn't say one way or the other, does it? I wouldn't be surprised if a lawyer wrote that statement or reviewed it before publishing.

Honestly? Yes. Think about it. If you only have a PlayStation 2, and a game is available on one or more gaming systems, does that motivate you to buy an Xbox 360? Please. A game exclusively for the Xbox 360 that prickles your desire enough will get you to buy a n Xbox 360.

A gaming console can't wholly expect to survive without exclusive games. As much as I love Nintendo and their products, they wouldn't have survived as long without their exclusive Mario and Zelda franchises. I've bought two of their gaming consoles for the Zelda goodness ALONE. I'm thinking about buying an Xbox 360 due to a few of its exclusive games. What got me into the PlayStation 2? Kingdom Hearts. The hopes of an exclusive Kingdom Hearts 3 is pretty much all I'm basing my desire to purchase a PS3 on.

Thanks to an interesting conversation with Grue this morning, I've sat down to seriously think about the exclusivity trend that I'm seeing with the next-gen consoles and the game developers. Two huge games that were supposed to be PS3 exclusives, Katamari Damacy and Assassin's Creed, no longer are. In fact, Katamari Damacy will not be on the PS3 at all. This is a huge blow to Sony. When Sony first came out with the PlayStation back in the nineties, they blew Nintendo off of the top of the videogaming hill. Microsoft attempted to repeat history with the Xbox, but Sony's PlayStation 2 kept them out of the number one slot. I expected the same with the PS3. But nope. Nintendo and Microsoft are both keeping Sony far away from the number one slot, most likely due to the pricing of the console. (I remember when we all thought Microsoft was insane for pricing the 360 at $400. Why Sony had to prove that wrong is beyond me.) Therefore a snowball effect occurs. The mass majority doesn't want to pay $600 for a game console, not when Nintendo is offering something revolutionary at $250 and the 360 has the same sought-after resolution but with exclusive games and a cheaper price. Since the mass majority won't buy such an expensive console, game developers don't think that people will buy the console if they offer their games exclusively to Sony. Game developers then remove exclusive titles from highly anticipated games, and people still don't by the PS3 because hey, the 360 and the Wii have this game. Sony has attempted to stop the avalanche with a price drop, but if most of the anticipated games are no longer exclusive, I'm not sure if that will be enough. Most people won't buy a new gaming console without the killer exclusive games.

I am on the edge of my seat wondering what will happen to my beloved Kingdom Hearts franchise. I've seen Katamari leave Sony, who is to say what Square-Enix will do with either of its top franchises. If they leave, it will break my heart for Sony, and not just because I probably won't buy the PS3 (if I haven't bought it already) if KH3 is nonexclusive, but that Sony used to be on top with exclusive games and well, the videogaming world, and they're falling apart.

I've been watching E3 most of the day today, and Sony is about to have their big presentation with their exclusive, Killzone 2. I hope for their sake that they're able to keep it an exclusive and keep Guerrilla Games happy. At least that would be a second step in stopping the snowball.

I really didn't know anything about Elebits when I bought the game except that I heard it was fun. After running through the tutorial and playing the first mission, I wished that I had read something about it before purchase. Don't get me wrong, it is a fun game. However, it's like the love child of a first person shooter and Katamari Damacy; the first of which I hate because I suck at them and the second of which was fun but had me lose interest quickly. I don't suck at this game, but I suck at aiming the capture gun, which is crucial. Thank God you can't run out of bullets. Despite how much fun it is to toss around furniture and break vases, like Katamari Damacy, every mission is the same and the storyline doesn't intrigue me enough to find out what is going on. So the Elebits are acting strangely and wreaking minor havoc. And? If you're going to have monotonous gameplay, at least have an intriguing story to go with it. There's one thing that CoM actually has up on this. The levels that restrict noise levels and the number of items you can break don't help break up the monotony either.

It's a fun game to pick up and play, wreak some havoc, actually flip over that coffee table you've always wanted to, but it's missing some elements to make me want to sit down and do nothing but play. I guess I am missing that RPG in my life, so Kingdom Hearts 2 it is. Probably should finish that game before my next birthday since it was a present for my last birthday...